Abstracts of Books

Abstracts of Books Unsigned abstracts arrived at the Journal before the editorial offices moved to Ohio State University, when we instituted a policy of identifying authors. We apologize that we cannot attribute unsigned abstracts. Henricus CorneUus Agrippa. Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Translated and edited by Albert Rabil, Jr. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. xxxü + 109 pp. ISBN 0-226-01058-9 (cl); 0-226-01059-7 (pb). Offers a new annotated translation of Agrippa's rhetorical defense of women. In this contribution to the querelle des femmes originally published in 1529, Agrippa challenged prevailing misogynist sentiments in science, law, and the Bible, arguing that women were in fact superior to men in morals and virtue, and that their lack of intellectual accomplishments was the result of social conditioning rather than innate inferiority. In addition to Agrippa's text, the volume includes a general survey of the Western tradition of misogyny and an essay that places Agrippa in historical context, thereby making this an excellent introduction to early modern thinking about women and gender. Birgitte Soland Giovanna Benadusi. A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. xiii + 259 pp.; ill., map. ISBN 0-8018-5248-X (cl). Examines how the social, financial, and professional strategies of provincial families in the town of Poppi, southeast of Florence, contributed to the formation of a regional elite that dominated municipal Ufe for over 150 years. Employing various methodologies, including social history, microhistory, historical sociology, and anthropology, Benadusi emphasizes the importance of the familial unit for the social formation of the early modern state. Threatened by expanding control of the central government, provincial elites strengthened their social position by establishing a sfranglehold on local political offices and regulating the distribution of public funds. The Poppi elite reoriented itself economically from artisan and commercial ventures to the investment and accumulation of land, and professionally from the once prestigious positions of notary and bureaucrat to interests in law and the military. To secure their privileged status, © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. 3 (Autumn) 228 Journal of Women's History Autumn the ruling famines established a policy of intermarriage that ensured a close network of family connections and loyalties. Stef any Dal Mina Carol Bleser, ed. Tokens of Affection: The Letters of a Planter's Daughter in the Old South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. xxxiv + 403 pp. ISBN 0-8203-1727-6 (cl). This book contains all the existing letters written by Maria Bryan Harford Connell (1808-1844) of Mt. Zion, Georgia, to her sister Julia Bryan Cumming of Augusta, Georgia. Connell, who lived on an 1800-acre plantation with 100 slaves, wrote detailed letters about the daily workings of the large plantation, including her own duties of housekeeping, caring for the sick, and making clothes for the family's bondspeople. The letters are a fascinating account of local Hancock County history, as well as a lens into the relationships that existed between whites and blacks in the Old South. Connell's letters include frequent mention of personal servants and domestic workers, as well as one condemnation of the institution of slavery as a "great evil." Tokens of Affection is a valuable tool in resurrecting the experiences of plantation women in the Old South, and it reveals much about the cycles of childbirth and child-rearing, marriage, religion, death, and friendship which ordered their lives. Kimberlynne Darby HéUsenne de Crenne [Marguerite Briet]. The Torments of Love. Edited by Lisa Neal. Translated by Lisa Neal and Steven Rendall. MinneapoUs: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. xxxiU + 204 pp. ISBN 0-81662788 -6 (cl); 08166-2789^1 (pb). First published in 1538, The Torments of Love has long been recognized as the first sentimental novel in French. In her excellent introduction, Neal argues that Briet also invents fictional autobiography with this novel. Her convincing argument challenges the assumption that Briefs work was completely autobiographical by examining the novel as a three-part whole. In the first part, HéUsenne describes the "torments" of being in love...